Dram of Poison

by Charlotte Armstrong

Mr. Gibson, gazing at a curb whizzing by, thought Doom, yes. Here comes doom, again.

  “I was depressed,” he said without spirit. “That’s a name for it.”

  “If you had only seen a doctor,” the nurse scolded him delicately, with her soft regret. “So often a doctor can help these depressed feelings.”

  “By a little tinkering in the machinery?” said Mr. Gibson rather bitterly.

  “They do know how to help sometimes,” the nurse said, rather mechanically. She seemed to be tasting, perhaps diagnosing this answer.

  “You go for this psychosomatic stuff?” inquired the bus driver abruptly.

  “Don’t you?” she said.

  “Long ago,” he declaimed, “long ago I threw a whole bunch of arbitrary distinctions outa my head. Either—or. Body or mind. Matter or spirit. Hah! Now it turns out matter is less solid than spirit, far as I can figure what they’re talking. Nothing’s any more un-gross than the human body. Or a chair, either. Zillions of cells—atoms and subdivisions of same—whizzing around, and … they made outa what? Waves. Rhythms. Time itself, for all we know. Caution to the jaybirds,” he concluded.

  Virginia laughed out loud, delightedly.

  But Mr. Gibson was on his way down for the second time. Doom, he said to himself, and aloud, “I suppose I was ill. At least that’s a name for what I was.”

  “Now,” said Virginia. “Look, we are so ignorant.”

  “Yes, we are ignorant,” said Rosemary gladly.

  “Anybody who knows anything at all about medical science—or any other, I guess—only begins to know how ignorant we are,” said Virginia. She looked brightly back at Mr. Gibson. She expected him to be glad.

  “Where there’s life there’s hope, you mean?” said Paul. He seemed to think he was joining in.

  The nurse frowned. Her small chin was almost resting upon the back of the front seat as she sat twisted around to talk to them. “I meant we know enough to know there’s an awful lot more to be found out We do know just a little bit about how to find it. Don’t you see, Mr. Gibson? There are people looking for ways to help all the time and they’ve found some. I’ve seen. Nobody knows what they might find out by tomorrow morning. You should have asked for help,” she chided.

  “So should I,” said Rosemary not very loudly.

  Mr. Gibson didn’t reply. He was busy perceiving something odd. It was hard to fit into the structure of doom. That was what was odd about it. Say the individual is depressed because of his internal chemistry, call it his machinery. Even so. He is not quite doomed … not if his fellow men, men who hold their minds open because they humbly know their ignorance … not if these have discovered even some helpful things to do for him. And this was strange, a strange weakness—wasn’t it?—in the huge hard jaws of doom.

  “That’s funny,” he said aloud.

  Nobody asked him what he meant and he did not tell. The car slid up a tree-lined street and all the passengers were silent for a block.

  Then Paul fidgeted. “I should have called home. I wonder if Jeanie got back … and Mama’s O.K.”

  “It must be nearly four o’clock,” said Rosemary. “Ethel will be home.” She lifted her head; it was almost as if she tossed it haughtily.

  Ethel! Gibson felt shocked. What would Ethel say? He couldn’t even imagine. Absolutely nothing that had happened since eleven o’clock this morning had made Ethel’s kind of sense.

  “I don’t think he was ill,” the bus driver blurted. “I think he was shook.”

  Virginia tilted her head to look at him respectfully.

  “To his foundations,” said the bus driver.

  “But everybody loved him,” said Rosemary, and raised her clenched hands like a desperate prayer.

  “Why sure, everybody thought a hell of a lot of Gibson,” said Paul indignantly, as if Mr. Gibson had offended unpardonably.

  “Everybody?” said the bus driver ruminatively. “Now, let’s not promise candy.”

  “Candy?” said the nurse with curiosity.

  “He had something on his mind; it wasn’t hardly just missing the brotherly love of his fellow man,” said Lee. “Hey? And look, honeybunch,” he said to his blonde, “we are now on Hathaway Drive, so where’s this mansion?”

  “It’s the white Colonial,” said Virginia.

  Rosemary said, “Maybe the poison is here.”

  Mr. Gibson was a chip in a current. He got out of the car with all the rest of them.

  They had pulled up within the wall, in the wide spot where the drive curved before the pillared entrance. The wide and spanking-white façade looked down upon them, and all the exquisite ruffles of the dainty window curtains announced that here money, and many hired hands, made order.

  Now Virginia took the lead. She rang the bell. A maidservant opened the door. “Is Mrs. Boatright here? We must see her quickly. It’s very important.” Virginia’s crisp grave manner was impressive.

  The maid said, “Come in, please,” looking as unsurprised as she was able. She left them standing on the oriental rug of the wide foyer. To their left was a huge room. A pair of saddle oxfords hung over the arm of a gray-and-yellow couch, which shoes wiggled, being attached to a pair of young feet. There must be a girl, flat on her back on the sofa. She was talking. There was no one else in there. She must be talking on the telephone.

  A boy, about sixteen years old, came in a jumping gallop down the broad stairs. “Oh, hi!” said he, and romped off to their right, where there was another room, and a lot of books and a piano. The boy snatched up a horn and they heard some melancholy toots receding.

  Then Mrs. Walter Boatright, in person, sailed out of a white door under the stairs. She was about five and a half feet tall and about two and a half feet wide. Every ounce under the beige-cotton-and-white-lace was firm. She had short white hair, nicely waved, and a thin nose made a prow for the well-fleshed face. Her eyes were blue (although not so blue as Rosemary’s) and they were simply interested. “Yes? Oh, Miss Severson. How do you do?”

  Virginia gave a little start at being called her own name, but she omitted any more preliminaries. “I saw you on a bus, today, ma’am …”

  “I’m so sorry,” cut in Mrs. Boatright, her words mechanical, while her eyes still inquired and expected. “Had I seen you, my dear …”

  The little nurse brushed this aside. “Please. Did you pick up a small green paper bag by mistake?”

  “I doubt it,” said Mrs. Boatright, accepting the abrupt manner as urgency without showing a ripple in her poise. “Now shall we just see?” She turned. Her bulk moved with surprising ease and grace. “Mona.”

  Mona turned out to be the maid.

  “Ask Geraldine if I brought in a small green paper bag.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Boatright.”

  “What is in the bag?” inquired the lady of the house of her callers.

  Virginia told her.

  Mrs. Boatright compressed her lips. “Yes, I see. This is serious,” said she. “Dell.” The girl on the phone bobbed up, using the muscles at her waist, and said, “Hold on a see, Christy. Yes, Ma?”

  “Put up the phone,” said Mrs. Boatright. “We’ll need it. Get Tom. Tell him to search his car carefully for a small green paper bag with a bottle in it.”

  “Yes, Ma.… Call you back, Christy. Bye now.”

  “My son picked me up at the bus stop,” said Mrs. Boatright in explanation, meanwhile sailing toward the phone.

  The girl, Dell, who was perhaps eighteen, went across before them in a gait like dancing. Her eyes were curious but smiling.

  A woman in a blue uniform came out of the white door. “No ma’am,” said she. “No green paper bag in the kitchen at all.”

  “Thank you, Geraldine,” said Mrs. Boatright and then into the phone, “The police, if you please?” She said to the five of them, who all stood speechless watching her operate, “Which of you is Mr. Gibson?”

  Mr. Gibson felt himself being pointed out from all sides. He stood in a dream, not miserabl
e enough, but rather . guiltily fascinated.

  “Police?” said Mrs. Boatright “Has the poison in the olive oil been located yet? … Thank you.” Mrs. Boat-right put the phone up and wasted no more time than she had words. “Not yet,” she said. “Yes, you were on the bus with me. Now, what can I do?”

  “It’s been a chain,” said Rosemary, quivering between disappointment and hope. “The driver remembered her. She remembered you.”

  “And I,” said Mrs. Boatright (who had not yet said “Oh dear” or “How terrible”) “remember Theo Marsh.” She nodded and held them in order with a kind of invisible gavel. “But, first, let’s be sure.”

  “Not a thing in my car, Ma,” said the boy, Tom, reappearing. He looked at the group with curiosity but did not ask questions.

  “Who …?”

  “Marsh?”

  “Where …?”

  Mrs. Boatright rapped the air for order. “The only way to reach Theo Marsh that I know of,” said she, “is to drive out there. He has no phone in his studio. The man isolates himself to work.” She saw their ignorance. “He is the painter, of course.”

  “Where is this studio?” asked Lee and added, “ma-dame?”

  “Can I describe it to the police, I wonder?” Mrs. Boat-right gathered her brows.

  “Can’t we go?” said Rosemary. “We’ve already been so far. It’s better than waiting …”

  “Might be quicker,” Lee said, “Surer.”

  Mrs. Boatright said, “As a matter of fact, it might be wiser. Theo Marsh might, just whimsically, lie low and refuse to admit a policeman. But he knows me.” One felt nobody could lie low, if Mrs. Boatright chose otherwise. “Now,” the lady turned lightly on her heel, “both Cadillacs are at the garage and won’t be available ’til six o’clock. Walter was forced to take Dell’s car. It seems, Tom, we must use yours.”

  The boy looked as dashed as if his mother had proposed removing his trousers to lend them to a tramp.

  “We have a car, madame,” the bus driver said, his sandy lashes somehow admiring her, “and there’s still half a tank of gas in her.”

  “And an excellent driver,” Virginia said.

  “Very well,” said Mrs. Boatright. “Mona, bring me my tan jacket, please, and my bag.” She made another of her swift turns. “Meantime, Tom, search the house for a bottle of olive oil in a green paper bag. By no means touch the contents. It is poison. Geraldine, serve dinner at six-thirty; I may be late. Dell …” (The girl was back.) “Call your father. Say I am called away. At seven, if I am not here, call Mr. Coster of the Board of Education and say I am unavoidably detained. Call Mrs. Peters and tell her I may not have the lists for her until tomorrow. Apologize.” She took her jacket from the hands of the maid who had hopped to do as she was bidden. “Let’s go,” said Mrs. Walter Boatright. She sailed out of her front door and the five of them straggled along in her wake.

  The bus driver got under the wheel and tucked his blonde beside him and Paul got into the right front seat.

  Mrs. Boatright let Rosemary go first into the tonneau while she turned and said to her son, “Keep Dell off the phone. I may call.”

  “Gosh, Ma, give me something easy,” the boy said.

  His mother flipped her hand farewell and she got in and Mr. Gibson, last, beside her.

  “Where to?” said the bus driver respectfully.

  “Go out the Boulevard,” said Mrs. Boatright, “all the way to the end of the bus line. Theo Marsh has a studio in the country. Quite a hideaway. But I believe I know the turn. If not, we can inquire at the junction.”

  The car was moving already.

  “I don’t just remember anybody who looked like a painter,” Lee said, “getting off the end of the line. You mean, a fine-art-type painter?”

  “If he got off sooner,” said Mrs. Boatright, “we cannot know where he was heading, and there is no use wondering about it. We must go on what we know.”

  “Sure thing,” said Lee. “That’s abso-tootly right.”

  “Very rustic, that studio,” Mrs. Boatright continued. “The man’s a fine painter, yes. But I’m just afraid …”

  “Afraid?” Rosemary’s voice sounded tired. Mr. Gibson couldn’t see her now. Not with Mrs. Boatright in the middle.

  “If Theo Marsh, of all people, found a bottle of olive oil on a bus … I assume it was imported?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Gibson.

  “He would accept it joyously, as a gift from the gods, and he, and that model of his, would add it to some feast or other with no hesitation. What a loss it would be!” said Mrs. Boatright. “A fine artist! We can’t spare them.”

  “What time is it?” asked Rosemary tensely.

  “Only four o’clock … just about one minute after,” Paul told them. “Too early for supper.”

  “Alas,” said Mrs. Boatright, “I imagine Theo Marsh will eat when he is hungry .I doubt if the man has names for meals.”

  “Is it very far?” asked Rosemary pathetically.

  “Thirty minutes,” promised Lee Coffey. “Do I know that boulevard!”

  The car picked up its heels and scooted rapidly down curving streets.

  “Now what’s all this,” said Mrs. Boatright severely, “about suicide?”

  Mr. Gibson put his hand over his eyes.

  “Ever since Ethel came,” said Rosemary passionately. “Ever since she came! I don’t know what she’s done to him. I was too upset by what she did to me.”

  “You are his wife, my dear?”

  “Yes, I am,” said Rosemary as defiantly as if somebody else had claimed the title.

  “And our driver is the driver of the bus, is he not?” Mrs. Boatright was proceeding with order, ignoring outbursts. “And the other gentleman?”

  “I am their neighbor,” said Paul. “Townsend is my name.”

  “And our friend,” said Rosemary with a forced sweetness as if she were struggling to keep polite and calm.

  “And Miss Severson was a passenger?” Mrs. Boatright sailed right on, “Does anyone remember the tale of the Golden Goose?”

  “Hey!” said the bus driver. “Sure, I remember. Everybody who takes ahold has to tag along. That’s pretty good, Mrs. Boatright.”

  “But who is Ethel?” Mrs. Boatright had come around a curve and would have all clear.

  “Ethel,” said Rosemary in a desperately even tone, “is Kenneth’s sister, a good woman, a fine person, who came here to help and to take care of us, after we had an accident …” Her voice rose. “I shouldn’t have said what I did. But I can’t—I cannot be grateful any more. It’s no time to be grateful. It just doesn’t count any more.” The strain was telling and Rosemary began to cry. “This terrible trouble and it’s getting late and I’d so hate it to be an artist … way out in the country and no help nearby …”

  Mr. Gibson, too, could see, ahead of them, a rustic studio strewn with bodies.

  “There wouldn’t be much help,” said Paul miserably. “That stuff works fast.”

  “Now, we’ll see, when we get there,” said Mrs. Boat-right, “and not before. Mr. Coffey is making the best possible time. We are doing the best possible thing.”

  “It’s so long …” wept Rosemary.

  So Mrs. Boatright, who was in equal parts mother and commanding officer, took Rosemary to her bosom and began to stroke her hair. Mr. Gibson felt a tremendous relief. He blessed Mrs. Boatright. The three heads in the front seat were still, facing forward.

  “Gratitude,” said the bus driver suddenly, “is for the birds. There’s all kinds of ins and outs to this, Mrs. Boat-right, and we don’t know the half of them. But this Ethel—see, Mrs. Boatright?—she puts it into Rosemary’s head that Rosemary meant to get him smashed up in an auto accident, which is why he is limping, did you notice? Well, this Ethel, she’s got poor Rosemary feeling guilty as hell because she was driving at the time, although it was a pure and simple accident … but this Ethel she’s the kind who knows better than you do what your real motives were, see?
And Rosemary thinks she shouldn’t get mad at Ethel, because this Ethel shows up to help and all and besides this Ethel is her sister-in-law and I don’t guess Rosemary likes squabbling with the relatives. Some people thrive on that. Hey? Some people make a career out of it.”

  “I see. I see,” said Mrs. Boatright, stopping his flow. “Had you seen much of this sister-in-law before?”

  “Never,” wailed Rosemary.

  “Let her cry,” said Virginia. “Cry hard, Rosemary.”

  Paul squirmed. “Look … she can’t take much more of this …”

  “It’s high time she bawled her head off,” the nurse said fiercely. “And Mr. Gibson, too.”

  But Mr. Gibson sat, dry-eyed and amazed.

  “I’m sorry …” sobbed Rosemary. “It isn’t really Ethel, herself. I know that. But it’s her ideas. It’s the way she thinks. And what can you do? I know I’m a rabbit but, even if you aren’t a rabbit, how can you fight that kind of thing? I’ve told myself … I’ve told her … I couldn’t have meant it But the idea is, I wouldn’t know if I had! I’d be the last to know! And how can you argue with somebody who just turns everything you say around? Who just makes you feel as if every time you opened your mouth you were giving some horrible inner beastly self away? If you insist, she thinks Aha, you protest too much! So you must really mean the exact opposite. If you talk loud, because you feel so strongly that you’re right … why, a loud voice means you must be trying to sell yourself a lie. It’s maddening,” said Rosemary. “You can’t know anything. You can’t trust yourself, at all.”

  Doomed, said Mr. Gibson in his throat or his mind. Nobody seemed to hear him.

  “What I’d like to know,” said Lee Coffey angrily, “is who gives this Ethel her license to read minds. Hey? I’d give Rosemary a fifty-fifty chance to know, as well as Ethel, what Rosemary means by, what she says.”

  “No, you can’t,” wept Rosemary! “You’re the last. That’s the paralyzing thing!”

  The nurse said some angry syllable under her breath. The driver’s head agreed savagely.

  “Gratitude,” said Mrs. Boatright, rhythmically stroking Rosemary’s hair with one plump jeweled hand, “lasts on, for a time, after the deed that caused it. But it’s like a fire, don’t you think so? It’s lit, it burns, it’s warm. But it needs fuel. It doesn’t last forever unless it’s fed.”